


Less Than Greek

by Blake



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Time, Gift Giving, Lingerie, M/M, Mutual Pining, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29616555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blake/pseuds/Blake
Summary: The whole Valentine’s Day gift thing is meant to be a joke.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 157
Collections: Merlin Bingo





	Less Than Greek

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to finish and post this a week ago on Valentine's, but then we got baby goats so I have had very little writing time! This story is kind of a rip off of all my wife's stories, but especially [this one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28718805), which I highly recommend. 
> 
> Thank you Jen for your help with this! All remaining errors are mine.

The whole Valentine’s Day gift thing is meant to be a joke.

The first year, when they’re flatmates at uni, Arthur gets Merlin an arrangement of two dozen red roses. It’s a play on that one time back in October when their other flatmate, Gwen, had pityingly given Merlin a sprig from the bouquet of wildflowers she was taking to her girlfriend, and Merlin had walked around for days with the flower tucked behind his ear like a lovestruck fool. The roses are funny. Everyone laughs. Merlin crushes most of the roses to strew their petals across Arthur’s bed as a retaliatory prank, but he presses one of them in his giant Shakespeare anthology and uses it as a sort of bookmark for the rest of term. Arthur takes that to mean that the joke was good enough to be worth remembering, at least. 

The second year, Arthur has heard a bit of gossip about Merlin dating a girl in town. To cover his surprise at the news that Merlin is not (as Arthur was starting to suspect) gay, he buys five boxes of chocolates, collects all the coconut ones out of each of them, and puts them all back in one box to give to Merlin because Merlin hates coconut. Arthur figures Merlin can give them all to his girlfriend, if she really exists, which Arthur isn’t sure of because Merlin doesn’t seem eager to talk about it, and Arthur is very respectful of his friend’s boundaries. The chocolates are funny, and everyone laughs again. Over the course of the next month, Arthur gets tastes of Merlin’s revenge in the form of coconut-filled chocolates melting in the most horrible places, such as under Arthur’s pillow, in the pages of his textbook, at the center of his tikka masala bowl, and, impressively, inside his 3-in-1 shampoo bottle. 

By the third year, they have moved into a flat that’s an equal commute to both their workplaces. Merlin has come out to Arthur, which is kind of a relief because it makes sense, but he hasn’t really brought any guys home or dated anyone serious, which is a relief because then Arthur doesn’t have to think too much about any stark differences between Merlin’s gayness and Arthur’s _theoretically-into-guys-and-thinks-they’re-hot-and-spends-all-his-time-with-gay-men-but-wants-a-wife-and-kids-so-will-probably-never-bother_ thing. Since they’re basically the same, Arthur has the right to give Merlin an extra hard time about his pathetic, sad, lonely lovelife. Especially on Valentine’s Day. So he rents _Twilight_ and buys candy hearts for Merlin to enjoy a night fit for any teenage girl who didn’t get invited to the dance. He even gets one of those broken-heart necklaces with the words _BEST FRIENDS_ spread across both halves to really hammer in the fact that Merlin has no Valentine besides his flatmate.

Merlin’s expression when he opens the box is a violent mix of exasperation and slyness. “Allow me,” Arthur says magnanimously before draping the chain of the _BE FRIE_ necklace across the top of Merlin’s shoulders and clasping it clumsily at the base of his pale, bony neck.

“Your turn,” Merlin says with a smile that’s all slyness, no exasperation.

“Please.” Arthur crosses his arms, rolls his eyes, and turns to the miserable teenagers on the screen. “I’m not a complete _girl_.”

Merlin then attempts to wrestle Arthur into the couch. It’s a laughable attempt, since Arthur could probably bench press him if he tried, so Merlin resorts to tickling, but Arthur still manages to fend him off, watching the swing of the silver _BE FRIE_ necklace dangling from Merlin’s neck above him. Merlin’s smile fades eventually, and Arthur takes the opportunity to grab the second necklace out of Merlin’s hand and close it in a tight fist where Merlin can’t reach it and try to force it on him again.

Opting to give up for the moment, Merlin sits up and starts complaining about Arthur’s homophobic movie choice instead. Arthur lets him put on _The Birdcage_ , which is ultimately a confusing movie because it’s all about two men having a kid, and they kind of get married, one of them is kind of a wife, and there’s this whole bit about how a guy can have had sex with women and still be gay. There are lots of things Arthur doesn’t like to think about because he suspects he wouldn’t be able to stop, like accidentally scraping against and activating an insect bite he’d been successfully ignoring and now can’t stop scratching at and making worse.

When Merlin laughs at the funnier bits, the chain of the necklace shimmers as it shifts against the tight muscles framing his throat and along the ridge of his collarbones right where it disappears underneath the crewneck of his t-shirt. Under the fabric, it’s not obvious that it’s a best-friends necklace. It’s not obvious that it’s a joke. If Merlin ever goes out to the club wearing it like this, guys won’t think he looks like a pathetic teenage girl who didn’t get asked to the dance. They’ll just think he looks hot.

Arthur stows the _ST NDS_ necklace in his sock drawer and spends a lot of the next year looking at the spill of cheap jewelry chain over the crest of Merlin’s collarbones.

He’s not sure what he’s thinking when he buys the lacy red knickers. He might _not_ be thinking, or else selectively thinking. He just wants to keep up the satisfying tradition of putting a very unimpressed expression on Merlin’s face every Valentine’s Day, and he doesn’t think a teddy bear or celebrity-branded perfume would be as funny. He’s definitely not thinking about the fact that Merlin wears his stupid necklace all the time and still uses that one rose as a bookmark. He’s not thinking about how both the roses and the chocolates ended up in _his_ bed, or about how their lives are so intertwined and full of crossed wires that this romantic Valentine’s Day gift thing is somehow _separate_ from the fact that Arthur has fallen in love with his best mate.

So to the best of his ability, he buys the knickers in a _best-mate_ kind of way, and not a creepy _I-picture-you-naked-because-I’m-in-love-with-you_ kind of way.

The gift doesn’t get much fanfare, anyways. Arthur’s caseload at work has increased so much that he can easily afford posh lingerie, but that also means he stays at the office late, even on days like Valentine’s Day. And Merlin apparently has so many friends-with-benefits that he has to choose whose date-night offer to accept. Arthur knows this because the selection process is a vocal one, involving cornering Arthur on Valentine’s Day morning while he makes coffee and describing all the pros and cons of each guy and demanding Arthur pick for him so that Merlin can do the exact opposite of his recommendation.

Arthur only half-listens because he’s only half-jealous; he does not envy the position of being Merlin’s friend-with-benefits, but he does lament that Merlin is probably more likely to eventually fall in love with one of his friends-with-benefits than with Arthur. He tries on the idea—not for the first time—of getting to kiss and fuck around with Merlin for long enough to see if Merlin could fall in love with him, too, but the stakes (their friendship, his heart) are too high for such a gamble. 

Breakfast seems a perfectly best-mate-ly time to give Valentine’s gifts, so Arthur runs to grab the gift-wrapped box from his room while the coffee finishes up and Merlin starts frying eggs. He drops the box on the counter next to the hob and channels the nervy, energetic rush of their bodies so close—(he hasn’t developed a long-term plan for dealing with that yet)—into a dashing smile.

Merlin points his greasy spatula at the box. “What is that?”

“Something for your date tonight,” Arthur says, pressing up against Merlin’s back to reach around and pick a piece of cooked egg white out of the pan. He burns his fingers but plays it cool.

“Let me guess. Lube and condoms again?”

Arthur stops sucking on his burnt finger and looks guiltily away, blushing at the refrigerator. The lubes and condom had been a couple of birthdays ago, but he doesn’t think he could pull that off anymore. And god, how long had he been obsessed with Merlin’s sex life, and why couldn’t he have figured out _why_ a bit sooner? “Of course not. Those are for any occasion, this is just for that _special someone_.”

Merlin gets buttery fingerprints all over the ribbon and box, but Arthur restrains him by the wrist before he can stain the lace. “You got me pants,” Merlin declares, perfectly unimpressed, just as Arthur had imagined.

Arthur takes the spatula out of Merlin’s hand so he can save the eggs from burning. “Yes.”

“I don't think they’re my size.”

“They are.”

Merlin turns around to lean his back against the counter and look straight at Arthur, blue eyes gone dark under the horrid kitchen lighting. “These are girls’ pants. And I’ve got a tiny bum and a big cock. They’re not going to fit.”

The pops and sizzles of frying fill the room as Arthur tries to come up with something to say aside from _I know_. Something to distract himself from picturing the obscene way they would fit; he knows Merlin’s trying to make him picture exactly that in some misguided retaliation attempt, but that’s not why Arthur resists the image.

Merlin comes around first. “Where’s your matching pair?”

Arthur makes a face. He should have better prepared for Merlin turning the gift against him. “I don’t think it’s my style.”

“How do you know if you don’t try?” Merlin asks, and then his mouth keeps running because he apparently loves making Arthur’s life difficult, and apparently Arthur loves that. “Maybe you’re born to wear lace knickers. Maybe if you try them once, it’ll feel so good that you’ll realize you’ve only been living half a life without them. Maybe you’ll—”

“Merlin.”

“I’m just saying,” Merlin says, quieter now, with a soft twist of a playful—or maybe rueful—smile on his plush, curved lips. Arthur gets the distinct impression that they’re not talking about lingerie. “You can’t know what you’re missing out on if you don’t try it.”

Merlin is talking about gay sex. Arthur must have failed to update him on transitioning from thinking he’d probably never bother trying it to _longing_ for it—specifically, deeply, physically—more than could possibly be healthy.

What Arthur is thinking about is not gay sex. Or at least, not _just_ gay sex.

He searches Merlin’s eyes for any sign that he knows Arthur is here for the taking, or that maybe Merlin was born to love Arthur, and if he tried once, it would feel so good that he would never turn back. Maybe falling in love is the thing Merlin is missing out on and won’t know until he tries it.

“I’ll drink to that,” Arthur says, moving to the coffee to pour himself a cup. He would stay to analyze the slide of Merlin’s gaze across his face, but he would be late for work. “Just, enjoy the gift. All right?”

Merlin doesn’t say anything, but when he brings their plates of slightly burnt eggs to the table and sits across from Arthur, he changes the topic to the weather, of all things, and it’s as if the prior conversation never happened. The thought crosses Arthur’s mind that he probably won’t be getting Merlin a Valentine’s gift next year, and he feels a strange, numb sense of mourning for a stupid tradition started by a young fool who had never been in love before.

But that night, Merlin comes home earlier than expected. Arthur sets down his reading when he hears the shower running and leaves his bedroom for a glass of water and, hopefully, to hear how terribly the date with Gwaine had gone. On second thought, he pours himself a glass of red wine as well.

“Hi,” Merlin says, sticking his head out the door and rubbing his hair dry. He has a childish, open grin on his face, which makes Arthur worry that maybe the date with Gwaine had gone well. “I’ll be right out. I’ve just got to put on some, erm. Fresh clothes.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows at that and takes a sip of the wine. If Merlin needs fresh clothes, the date must have been a messy one. Not that the thought does anything to dampen Merlin’s appeal as he skitters across to his room dressed in a towel, slight bones shifting like shadows under pale skin, droplets of water still meandering down his back. The billowing steam from the shower magnifies the scent of his skin until it’s all Arthur can smell.

While Merlin dresses, Arthur puts _The Birdcage_ on. To distract himself, or else to indulge his nostalgia for their earlier Valentine’s Days together, he has no idea, but he finds comfort in it regardless.

Merlin saunters into the room wearing a clean white t-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, and when he falls onto the saggy couch beside Arthur, the weight of impact pulls their bodies closer. His skin is still all Arthur can smell. 

“Can I have some of that?” Merlin asks, already reaching for the stemless wine glass in Arthur’s hand.

“No, you may not.” Arthur pulls the cup further away from Merlin’s grasp because he knows Merlin will ignore his words and try to take it anyway. But then Merlin is climbing over him, skin and warmth all over Arthur’s front, and the smell of his skin, his deodorant, his shower gel, and—

Arthur hands over the glass.

Merlin drains it.

Arthur watches his throat working and the soft press of his lower lip up against the underside of the glass. “Was your date that bad?”

Merlin’s mouth pops off the empty glass and forms a tilted smile. He looks sidelong at Arthur, then directly at him with a more somber and careful expression that Arthur can’t read. “I’m not really sure it counts as a date.”

Onscreen, Nathan Lane’s character is having a fit about thinking he’s being cheated on, and Arthur turns to watch that instead of the slow, wet motions of Merlin’s lips. “Then was your _hookup_ that bad?” he asks, gesturing to the sucked-dry glass Merlin has set down on the coffee table. He swallows, trying to be open-minded; he may find Gwaine incredibly irritating for numerous reasons, but he has always seemed quite attentive to Merlin. “Or that good?”

A choked, wordless sound comes from Merlin’s closed mouth. He’s studying Arthur’s profile; Arthur can tell, and it makes him nervous. “Actually,” Merlin says, voice quiet and shaky, “we spent most of the time talking about you.”

That is—not at all what Arthur was expecting to hear, so the obvious response is to act completely unfazed. “Well, you can tell _Gwaine_ that I don’t _like him that way_ ,” he jokes crisply, trying to think of what Merlin actually meant by _We spent most of the time talking about you._

Merlin is quiet for a few seconds, then abruptly reaches to pause the movie and takes the empty glass. “I need more wine.”

_Why_ , Arthur wants to ask, but then Merlin stands, and his shirt rides up and his waistband gets tugged down a bit and there, against the pale skin of his hip, an inch of loose red lace peeks out. Instead of asking _why,_ Arthur just flatlines. His eyes follow Merlin’s journey to the kitchen and back, but his brain is just recycling the same handful of what might be considered thoughts: _fresh clothes; not date clothes; talking about you; I need more wine; so fucking pretty; bitable; how do you know if you don’t try?_

Just to be sure it wasn’t a trick of his eyes, Arthur carefully watches Merlin’s hips again as he sits down, though Merlin takes such a long time shimmying to his seat that it almost seems he wants to be noticed. Arthur tries to talk, but his mouth is so dry he has to swallow and start again. “You’re wearing your Valentine’s gift.”

Merlin meets his eyes, takes one long sip of wine, and then looks into Arthur’s eyes some more. He’s wearing that solemn, lopsided smile he has sometimes, the one that seems soft as tears but always pushes Arthur away as hard as a brick wall.

A flickering flame is picking up fuel in Arthur’s chest and licking at his ribs. And that’s _before_ Merlin’s smile takes on an even more ironic edge as he says, “Yes, well. As you said, they’re for my special someone.”

“Merlin,” Arthur chokes out, not bothering to wet his throat first, too anxious to wrap his hand around Merlin’s arm and keep him from turning away. And god, they’ve touched a million ways, a million times, and sometimes Arthur is so hyper-aware of every detail of every inch of skin where they’re touching, but right now, all he can feel is the nebulous, all-consuming sensation of _closeness,_ of heat bleeding together, and it’s that difference that makes him hope that something has _changed_. “Am I?”

“Are you…?” Merlin murmurs, the smile dropping from his face as his eyes drop to Arthur’s mouth. His face looks so hollow when he’s not smiling, his lips so empty and wanting.

Gently, gradually, as though approaching something which might startle away from how badly he wants it, Arthur brings a hand to Merlin’s jaw. A light touch at first, careful, and then when Merlin doesn’t run away, firmer, greedier. Merlin tilts subtly into the cup of his palm, and a gasp rushes out of Arthur’s chest, out of his control, just like his racing heart. “Merlin,” he whispers, only realizing how close he’s gotten when their noses brush as he talks, their lips sharing breath when he continues, “I want—” He loses his train of thought, though, when he tastes the impatience in Merlin’s exhale, the sharp taste of a buried kiss being inexorably drawn to the surface. Arthur’s thumb darts out to touch it but only reaches the shallow corner of Merlin’s mouth before Arthur is overwhelmed. Merlin’s eyes flash bright as they flicker up to meet his—an electric blue that sends shocks into Arthur’s stomach and lower. “You’re mine—my special someone.”

Merlin kisses him like Arthur is his, too.

And it’s the greatest thing Arthur has ever felt: lips, teeth, sturdy-quivering hands, hot breath. It feels so good it hurts. Arthur doesn’t know how he ever lived without this. “Tell me,” he says, in between biting Merlin’s upper lip and sucking it into his mouth, “Tell me I’m yours.”

“Arthur, I’m so fucking in love with you, you absolute—,” and Arthur kisses the rest of the sentence away, trying to touch all of him at once.

In some corner of his mind, Arthur knows he must be pushing forward because Merlin ends up flattened out underneath him, their chests heaving and pressed together, hips aligned and—“Mmph,” Arthur moans, deep in a tangle of tongues when he feels Merlin’s cock against his stomach, clearly too big and _hard_ to be constrained by flimsy lace. And fuck, it’s probably too much too soon for Arthur to be rutting between Merlin’s legs, but Merlin’s thighs part to draw him in closer, his breaths come out in surprised little gusts while Arthur kisses down his neck to suck a mark on his collarbone, tasting the metal of his necklace.

Blindly and with an unsteady hand, Arthur grazes reverently across Merlin’s body-warm t-shirt and down to his hip, his grip tightening when he feels the scratch of lace against such terribly soft skin. He aches to fit the entire bone in his hand, to hold, _his_. Instead, he rests his forehead on Merlin’s breastbone and curves his spine enough to look down into the space between their bodies, at their two hard cocks, the way they’re nestled close despite the barriers of their trousers, the way the glistening wet tip of Merlin’s is visible at the edge of his waistband. His mouth swells with longing as his hand tightens on Merlin’s hip. His whole body presses _in_ , _closer_ , pushing a soft sound out of Merlin’s mouth.

“Am I crushing you?” Arthur manages to ask, lifting his head to look at Merlin and holding his weight up off of Merlin’s slighter body.

“No,” Merlin says, voice adamant. His arms wind around Arthur’s middle to pull him in. His hand slides firmly down under the back of Arthur’s joggers and _squeezes_.

The touch punches a grunt straight from Arthur’s stomach into the air, bypassing his mouth and his brain, which is taken over by static blue want.

“Oh, fuck,” Merlin groans. His mouth hangs open as his hand digs deeper into Arthur’s flesh, pulling him apart and open in this way that feels insanely possessive and _so fucking good_. “You like that?” Merlin asks, making what feels like a fist in the muscle of Arthur’s arse.

The breathlessness of his voice makes Arthur think that it’s probably okay to keep arching up into Merlin’s hand, to keep letting his hips try to splay, to keep spreading where Merlin is pulling him open. “Yeah,” Arthur says as he lifts one knee to dig into the soft back of the couch to give Merlin more access. There’s an almost angry-looking disbelief or awe on Merlin’s flushed face, and Arthur really can’t tell anymore whether it’s Merlin’s hand that feels so good or the observable evidence that he can completely ruin Merlin by letting his fingers clutch and claw and inch ever closer, closer, closer—

In one quick movement, Merlin pushes Arthur’s waistband down past his hips and rubs firm and sweet against Arthur’s hole with three fingertips. Arthur collapses forward, choking on sensation—raw but tender, invasive but _so right_ —and then on a kiss as he finds his way to Merlin’s mouth to suck the moans of appreciation out of him. Arthur fucks into the nameless space between the wiry hairs of Merlin’s abdomen and the soft cotton of his shirt, rocking back against those soft, careful fingers.

But Merlin hisses and winces suddenly, and not in a good way, so Arthur pulls up, worried that he’s done something wrong. “Oh, it’s just—,” Merlin grabs impatiently at Arthur’s shoulders, and Arthur can’t help but smile, dizzy at the sight of Merlin flushed and rumpled beneath him. _I’m so fucking in love with you,_ he’d said, and Arthur’s heart pounds out an echo in his chest. “It’s nothing. Just that—lace isn’t actually very comfortable, you know.”

Arthur looks down at where he’s been grinding against Merlin, probably chafing him something awful. “I actually _don’t_ know,” Arthur says, some of his wits restored by worry and guilt.

Merlin laughs, sounding giddy and ridiculous, and Arthur is so fucking in love with him.

He pushes away from Merlin, sliding down to kneel on the floor and keeping Merlin’s knees on either side of him. “Guess I’d better learn.”

The knickers truly are a terrible fit. They’re basically just a loose strip of lace that Arthur easily pushes aside to get his mouth on Merlin’s cock, which Arthur has seen before and has thought about like this before, but has never _seen like this_ before. He satisfies himself with the heat of its deep red flush on his tongue, the soft kiss of its steel between his lips, the sting of the salt he licks out from its slit, and the musk that intensifies in his mouth with each stroke, as if he’s drawing it out, as if he’s changing the way Merlin smells and tastes. Then he follows the twitching muscles in Merlin’s stomach and the clutching fingers in his hair until his own hands are soaked with his drool and Merlin’s thighs are spasming around his ribs, and he must be _so close_ , and Arthur _did that to him_ , and the taste in his mouth is changing yet again, a hint of something coming, like a storm on the wind.

Arthur pulls away just in time for Merlin’s cry of “I’m gonna—” to be replaced by a groan of indignant frustration. He makes up for it quickly, though, tugging Merlin’s cock with one hand and moving his mouth lower. He pulls the lace up tight against his balls and licks with a soothing, flat tongue until the material is all wet, and soon enough, Merlin is coming in Arthur’s hand, and Arthur feels the jerking pulses of his release surging from this place under his tongue, trapped beneath soaked lace.

Arthur scrapes his mouth and the bridge of his nose raw on the fabric and looks up to show Merlin. “Personally, I don’t find the lace to be all that uncomfortable.”

That’s how he learns that lace knickers can also be used as a somewhat effective gag.

The neighbors, at least, probably appreciate it.

But Merlin removes the gag almost as soon as Arthur has finished coming down his throat, too needy for kisses—especially once they make it to a bed and have enough room to properly roll around naked in it. Every few minutes, Arthur has to pull back to look at Merlin to make sure he’s real, that _this is real_.

“I suppose I owe Gwaine a thank you gift,” Arthur concedes, tucking Merlin’s head tighter under his chin so that he has less freedom to keep going on about how Gwaine’s analysis of Arthur’s idiotic behavior was one of only two reasons Merlin found the fortitude to test the waters and let Arthur get a glimpse of how in love with him he’d been for years. (The other reason was the stolen glass of wine.)

Without leaving his spot on Arthur’s chest, Merlin gropes around in the bedding behind him and procures the knickers. “He can have these,” Merlin says, slapping the garment wetly onto Arthur’s stomach. 

Arthur grabs them and closes them in a fist. “Absolutely not,” he sighs, combing his other hand through Merlin’s hair, closing his eyes in pleasure at the smell of him. “We’re keeping these.” He has a place in mind to keep them forever, in his sock drawer, beside a necklace that reads _ST NDS_.


End file.
